07 avalanche, 5.3, 102,000 miles.<- all factor trans and gears.
currently has shortie headers,cai, diablo intune


I'm NOT looking to drop thousands of dollars on this.
Can you average Joe do a cam swap and or head swap and see some halfa$$ hp gains? Actually going for the poor man's route (not that actually makes sense )
Kinda like some low in hp/torque to get the heavy beast down the road a lil quicker.

 

If your mechanically inclined and decent with hand tools you can do a head swap and/or cam swap but unless you are getting the parts really cheap I don't see you doing it for under $1,000.....at least not with parts that will actually gain you anything.

Now the reality is heads/cam upgrade will really help your midrange to high end than it will your low end. The nature of a larger cam and better flowing heads is that you lose a little bit down low to gain midrange and high end performance. You can compensate for some of this with increased compression but only to a point.

Your best bet to get you moving off a stoplight "quicker" is to do a gear swap assuming it doesn't have 4:10's from the factory already. I would go with something around a 4:56 in a heavy avalanche if you can stand the highway rpms and gas mileage.

The other options, larger motor or roots style blower, will obviously put you over budget. From my experience it costs much more to gain hp/tq down low than it does up high......

Whatever you do factor into your budget an in person tune or a dyno tune and get rid of the diablo.

Good Luck!

 

cam could be done for around $6-800. for you tho i dont see it being a good starting point.

get a converter and a trucool 40k

 

I did my first head/cam swap ever on a 5.3 in about a day. Prior to that I'd never done much more than a CAI and fluid changes.

 

I have 373 gears.... so putting 410 would help?
Is this a hard swap out job?

 

depends on the size of tire you are running. also i wouldn't do it my self as it takes some knowhow. also when putting new gears in its best to also put in a after market limited slip so when all said and done its like $1800 for just a rear end.